“First thing, I’m a Tennessee guy. I want Tennessee to always do well, and I want us to do it with character and integrity, which we’ve always done, and to appreciate our traditions and our history. Appreciate what other coaches and players have done here prior to me, and what others will do after me or Derek or whoever. We didn’t have that (with Lane Kiffin)…”

But didn’t you leave Junior in a tight spot, talent-wise?

“The knock on the talent, we had four guys play in the Super Bowl, we had two first-rounders this year, looks like four or five guys are going to be drafted,” Fulmer said after the first round of the draft. “I think it’s just par for the course when somebody replaces somebody and they have maybe a holier-than-thou attitude of arrogance or whatever. Then that’s just kind of normal…”

Oh. Okay. But what about that new sense of spirit that was part of the Laner’s plan?

“There are certainly good players at Tennessee, and it’s a shame what we’ve gone through with losing as many guys from the program for whatever reason, counting the really good players that I had committed my last year.”

I thought I might provide you with a few updates as Tidefan and I do some offseason tweaking to the Mumme Poll.

I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but the site has been taken down temporarily so that Tidefan can apply some judicious rejiggering. He’s excited about what he’s doing, so I am as well.

I’ve hinted at it previously, but the expansion of the voting pool gives us the chance to modify the ballot process. My goals are (1) to simplify the vote and (2) to have a model that is purer from an approval voting standpoint. Along those lines, the 2010 ballot will have ten slots instead of twelve and will only allow for a first place designation to break a tie in the top slot. I don’t think we’ll see too many ties with the move (the most ties we saw last season came in the final post-bowl ballot, which had by far the smallest voting pool), and really, when you get down to it, how much do ties outside of the top slot matter?

The biggest complaint by far that we received last season was over obvious omissions from someone’s ballot of a team that should have been there by any logical explanation. In our defense, there simply wasn’t enough time to review 200-600 ballots to check for votes like that. So one thing we intend to implement this season is public access to all of the votes. Sunshine and peer review will, I hope, have a positive impact on this problem.

If you’ve got any complaints or suggestions about what you’d like to see in the 2010 edition of the Mumme Poll, lay ’em out for us in the comments.

College football’s dead period has begun in earnest. You need to eat to keep your strength up:

This may be the dumbest conference expansion/realignment speculation piece I’ve read yet, as it completely ignores the primary motivation behind any (potential) movement – the almighty dollar.

Sounds like the Zooker has the Illinois faithful fired up. “Very small crowd at the spring game. I’d say about 2,000 total, the smallest I can recall.”

Feel the sarcasm: “From that hyped 2006 recruiting class (ranked No. 5 nationally, proof of Charlies Weis’ greatness, foundation for multiple BCS titles), there were two players picked: Sam Young and Eric Olsen, and both went in the sixth round.”